GDC 2018: Google Teases New Announcements, Possibly In AR/VR

We’re looking forward to seeing what’s new from Google at its I/O developer conference later this year, but before then we might get a sneak peek of what’s in store at the 2018 Game Developer’s Conference in two weeks’ time.

Google is heading to GDC with its very own developer day on Monday, March 19th. The day will be filled with talks for developers working on its Android platform, which of course now includes the Daydream mobile VR ecosystem and ARCore AR platform. The day is going to kick off at 10am PST with a welcoming keynote, though, and Google says to expect “new product announcements” and more during the talk.

It might not be related to VR but Nathan Martz, AR/VR Developer Platforms Product Manager at Google, will be one of the three speakers in this session, so it’s a good bet there will be at least some immersive tech news (perhaps on the software side if not hardware). Following the keynote, Google has two AR talks, one again from Martz, so we’d expect any announcements to concern ARCore over Daydream.

That said, it’s possible that we get a release date for Google and Lenovo’s upcoming standalone VR headset, the Mirage Solo, which is expected to launch at some point during Q2 for $399. The headset runs on Daydream and features full six degrees of freedom (6DOF) positional tracking, making it a notable step up for the standalone headset category. At the very least, we’ll hope to get a better look at it during GDC.